Organic Food Store Insurance

Posted on: July 24, 2014

Organic food stores are grocery stores that carry only natural and organic foods. This includes pre-prepared meals, herbs and spices, produce, beverages, vitamins, and supplements. As an owner of an organic food store, your biggest risks are liabilities with your customers, theft and damage to your business property. With organic food store insurance, you can protect these risks and keep your business intact.

Types of Organic Food Store Insurance

From standard small business insurance policies to risk specific policies, there are different types of organic food store insurance policies meant to protect your business. Consider your primary risks and look for policies to protect them, in addition to specific risks, like spoilage insurance.

This policy is an insurance policy that covers multiple types of liabilities with three areas of protection, including premises liability, completed operations and liability for products you sell. Products liability covers any damages caused by the products sold, such as a customer having an allergic reaction to a food product claiming not to contain nuts even though they were indeed in the food. Premises liability is for injuries on your premises, like a customer falling at the entrance due to rain making the floors slippery. Completed operations is for any special services you provide.

You likely use your own vehicle to run errands related to your organic food store, like picking up supplies or meeting vendors, and these trips need to be covered by a commercial auto insurance policy. With business auto insurance, you can choose what is covered, such as property damage, vehicle damage, bodily injury, uninsured motorists, theft and vandalism.

Organic Food Store Business Owner’s Policy (BOP)

The business owner’s policy (BOP) is a package policy that lets you choose the limit of general liability, employee dishonesty, electronic data, business income, extra expense, contents, or newly acquired and constructed buildings. Most BOP policies contain all of these coverages.

Unexpected events happen every day, and most of them provide no warning to allow for you to prepare for them. With your organic food store, this might mean a fire in your store, extreme weather like a major snowstorm, or even a natural disaster. When these disasters strike, they damage your store and items within your store. If there is a tropical depression to hit in your area and your building faces damages, the repairs are covered by a business property policy if the business owner owns the building that he or she occupies. If not, only the business personal property is covered.

Organic Food Store Spoilage Coverage

Food spoilage can occur if your store or warehouse loses power or something else causes your refrigeration or freezer systems to stop working. This may mean thousands upon thousands of dollars in organic product destroyed. If you had spoilage coverage as part of your organic food store insurance protection though, the policy will help cover the financial loss from these types of incidents.

Cyber crimes are still very common, even with the advanced security now available with websites. Whether you have a website just to show your recent promotions or you sell goods online, this is a policy you need. If there is an identity theft situation following a customer’s order, you are responsible for the damages. With a cyber liability insurance policy, these legal costs are covered.

By law, you are required to cover each and every employee with a workers’ compensation insurance policy. They are at risk from everything from repetitive motion injuries from stocking shelves or using the cash register to slip and fall accidents occurring while on the job. For example, if an employee falls off a ladder while stocking the top shelves of the medicine aisle in your store, any medical costs, recovery costs and missing income is covered by the workers’ compensation policy. It also prevents the employee from suing your company for the injuries sustained.

Business insurance policies typically have a maximum amount of coverage. The liability policies for your Organic Food Shop (General Liability and Commercial Auto for example) all have coverage limits. Umbrella liability insurance therefore is used to increase your liability limits for all of these risks under one policy to protect your business for claims that exceed your primary policy limits.

Organic Food Store Crime Insurance

Crimes such as shoplifting, vandalism, theft and dishonest employees can all occur in an organic food store. You are at risk from customers stealing items while they shop or in the middle of the night having your store vandalized. You also need to protect your organic shop from employees who might steal money or goods from your store. Protect all of these crimes with this crime insurance policy as an important organic food store insurance policy.

By choosing from these organic food store insurance policies, your organic food store will be well protected and you can rest easy knowing if something did occur, you would have proper coverage. It helps you continue expanding your business and not worrying about lack of business insurance.